14-Feb-2006
Title: Launch 8/?
Author: TB
Archive: GWA and
http://www.geocities.com/brother_maxwell/TB_home_page.html
Category: yaoi
Pairing: 3x4, 2
Disclaimer: The plot and characters of Gundam Wing are used here without
permission or profit.
Notes: Enter canon characters! Mostyn, for those who don't know, is a
Welsh name. Just thought I'd note that.
Spoilers: The story begins three years after Endless Waltz and references it
and the series.
Summary: Part 8: Quatre agrees to have a valve replacement surgery, and
Duo shows up to support him in the operating room.
By supper, Quatre was starting to feel like he lived in the infirmary.
He'd supplied as many bodily fluids as he wanted to remember, sleeping between pokes. He gave Nurse Hanley the name and number of his regular doctor and listened to half of their consultation before he was interrupted by Suki's reappearance, with a lunch of egg salad sandwiches and fresh shrimp. He reassured her of his health, glowing red with embarrassment the entire time, until she finally took pity and left him alone. As if she'd opened a floodgate, he received a number of visitors in the next few hours, some of whom hadn't even been present when he collapsed. O'Callaghan was among them, and managed to divert his attention for a while with whispered speculation about the bug. He hadn't found any others, which seemed to confirm Trowa's story, but Quatre, still feeling rueful about how that particular interview had been turned on its head, wasn't quite convinced by the lack. He didn't tell O'Callaghan that he intended to do a second search on his own, if Hanley ever let him out on his own two feet again.
Mostyn came by as well, firmly shutting the hatch in the face of a trio of graduate students from the science crew. He pretended to struggle to keep it closed, leaning on the door in an exaggerated pose. Quatre only groaned, and covered his face with a pillow.
Mostyn took it away from him and sat comfortably on the edge of Quatre's bunk, grinning down at him. 'I hear you made quite the impression.'
'I'll have to spend weeks un-making it,' Quatre realised, newly dismayed. 'It's the thing that never dies.'
Mostyn didn't laugh at his half-hearted joke. 'I'm going to ask this once,' he said seriously, 'and I want you to answer truthfully.'
Quatre didn't like the sound of that. His father had often said that very sentence to him, and it had never ended well. He could only think that Mostyn was getting pressure from the Oceanic and Atmospheric Admin, and they wanted Trowa's name. Should he reveal it? Trowa would certainly not get the IEO security contract then- but he'd already lost it once and anyway, he shouldn't be concerned with Trowa's problems, especially if Trowa chose to solve them in a way that endangered, or at least appeared to, any of his own projects. He was just making up his mind to give the scheme away when Mostyn, taking his worried silence for compliance, asked his question.
'Why didn't you tell me you had a medical condition?'
It was so beyond what he'd been expecting that for a moment he was struck dumb. It took far longer than that to switch his mental gears. 'It never came up,' was the first thing out of his mouth.
Mostyn sighed. 'Son,' he said, 'I can't take care of you if you don't help me do it.'
Quatre paused. 'I'm sorry?' he asked.
Mostyn was patient. 'When the rest of the crew came on, I had medical records for all of them, for insurance. Same with the science team. But you're only a guest, and you didn't have any forms to sign. It was your job to tell the fine Nurse Hanley there about any conditions which might require her care.'
'But, I don't,' Quatre said. 'That is, I'm medicated for it. It's just- it's a heart thing, but it's not bad. I've had it all my life.' He wondered why he felt so young, suddenly. There was something determinedly fatherly in Mostyn's face, just then, and Quatre saw as he never really had before the difference in their ages, how he was really no older than those graduate students waiting outside, for all that he had never been like them.
His shift in perception was not a very happy one, and he longed distinctly for the easy exchange of equals they'd had no more than a few hours before.
'I'm sorry,' he said slowly. 'You're right. It was my responsibility.'
'Your- problem- it didn't have anything to do with what happened on the bridge?' the captain asked with awkward indirectness.
'I can answer that one,' Hanley interrupted, coming to his bedside holding his prescription bottle. She asked silently for Quatre's permission to speak in front of Mostyn, and he granted it with a nod. 'These are sugar pills,' she said, dropping them into his open hand. 'Which would explain why they're not working at all.'
'Sugar pills?' Quatre demanded. 'What are you talking about?' Mostyn echoed him only a beat behind.
The nurse shrugged. 'It happens sometimes,' she said. 'Pharmacies mix medicines, they get bad batches from the production line. Whichever one happened to you, it explains why the symptoms of your condition have been returning. You've also been going cold turkey since you filled this bottle.'
He glanced automatically at the date. He'd gotten several months supply just before he left for Dorada, four weeks ago now. 'I don't remember how long I haven't been feeling well,' he admitted. He looked up. 'Cold turkey- wouldn't that be a little more severe? I've just felt... not great.'
'It's different for every person,' she explained. 'Your dosage isn't very high, and you're otherwise in perfect health. Plus, you've been taking propanolol for a very long time. You had it deep in your system. It would take between five days and a week to wear off entirely.'
'So what happens now?' Mostyn asked, stepping in. He had that look on his face again, and Quatre was fairly sure he could have lived out the rest of his life without an older man making decisions for him. He frowned, but only made sure that the nurse was answering him, and not the captain.
He needn't have worried; Hanley knew who her patient was. To Quatre, she said, 'I've already spoken to your doctor about it, and she's ordering you a refill, with real pills. If she ships it to Canada, you'll have it by the time we're due for shore, anyway. But I'd like to ask first why you never had the surgery.'
'Surgery?' At first he didn't know what she meant; then memory dawned. 'When it first came up, my father said I was too young,' he told her, and by extension Mostyn, who was frowning at him. 'My doctors all agreed it could be controlled through medication. After my father died, I just- well, I never thought about it again.'
'You should think about it now,' Hanley advised him. 'Valve replacement surgeries are very common. It would alleviate the problem, and you'd be free of medication after a few months. Compared to being medicated for the rest of your life, it's a lot more comfortable and a lot less complicated.'
He was frowning, now. He had honestly never contemplated the possibility. But she was right. He was healthy and young enough that recovery would certainly be easy. He often forgot to take his pills as it was. 'I need to consult my own doctor, of course,' he heard himself say, and looked up to catch the smug expression on Hanley's round face.
'Of course,' she repeated. 'Which is why I've kept her on the line. Go talk to her.'
He blinked. But she was shooing Mostyn off the bed and toward the hatch, and stripping the light sheet he'd been sleeping under, before he could articulate any kind of protest. He found himself seated before the wall-mounted 'vid before he knew it, and then he was alone in the infirmary with just the buzz of the computer.
'Well,' he muttered to himself, and flicked on the screen. As promised, Doctor Naumann was waiting for him. She smiled when he greeted her, still a little startled.
'Nurse Hanley filled me in on what happened,' she began, cutting across his introduction. 'She told me she was going to suggest the surgery. Will it save time if I just tell you now I agree?'
'You never brought it up before,' Quatre retorted, finding himself confused and outflanked.
Her smile slipped a little, and he realised that had sounded harsh. 'We never discussed your mitral valve prolapse except to be sure you were happy with the propanolol,' she said. 'If you'd never had a problem with it, I might not have brought it up. Surgery with a condition as mild as yours is only optional. But since it *has* come up, there's no reason not to think about it.'
'What would the surgery entail?'
Naumann seemed encouraged by his curiosity, however reluctant. 'It would run two to four hours. They'd open your chest, paralyse your heart, and replace your mitral valve with a synthetic one.'
'And this is routine?' he demanded.
'Absolutely,' she assured him quickly. 'It's a little more complicated than that- they'll put you on a respirator and circulate your blood through a machine while your heart is immobilised. Quatre, thousands of these are performed every year in London alone. You'd be in and out of the hospital in a matter of days, and you could be back on your boat in two weeks if you really push it- not that I recommend that.'
As he had with the bug, he merely let the existence of the surgery sit in front of him, the information scrolling past in Naumann's polite English accent. He discovered he was still holding his prescription bottle, and he rolled it to look down at the label.
'How soon could I do this?' he asked.
He heard tapping, and looked up to see her eyes focused downward, toward a keyboard he couldn't see. A moment later, she reported triumphantly, 'I can have you in St Thomas's in London on Monday.'
He stared at her. 'You're serious? That fast?'
'You give me the word, and I'll schedule you right now. The surgeon would be Patil Pitik. He has an excellent reputation and performs these surgeries all the time. I've referred several patients to him.'
Quatre calculated quickly. They would pull into port late Friday evening, and if he caught a very early flight on Sunday, he might even be able to fit in a few of the meetings he'd scheduled for Toronto. If he was on his feet in two weeks, he'd be able to catch the IEO just before they made for the Panama Canal and the Pacific Ocean.
'Well- all right,' he said, decided. 'Schedule me.'
The nurse touched Quatre on the shoulder, interrupting him with an polite smile. 'We're ready to begin, Mr Winner,' she said.
Quatre sighed. 'Call Iraia for me,' he told Mirvat. 'And if you can cover the conference with the Japanese-'
'Go have your surgery,' his sister scolded. Her voice, tinny and distant in his wireless earpiece, turned sympathetic. 'I'll make the calls. And one of us will be there when you wake up.'
'Thank you. Good-bye.' He started to disconnect, stopped at a thought. 'Don't forget on Thursday-'
'You know, some of us were doing this before you were even born, baby brother. We'll handle things while you're out.'
He grinned at the ceiling and the scowling nurse's head that interposed itself between them. 'Good-bye,' he repeated, and cut the call. He tried to wear a sheepish expression when he slipped off the piece and handed it over. 'Sorry,' he said contritely. 'I guess this is how I deal with nerves.'
Instantly her look became matronly, and she patted his shoulder. 'This will be absolutely routine,' she promised. It was, as far as Quatre could tell, the litany of St Thomas's Hospital.
A young man in scrubs, already wearing his cotton face mask, appeared with a metal arm and a sheet. He attached it to the table just above Quatre's collar, and began to drape the yards of material, hiding the doctor who had just appeared with a catheter. 'We're ready for anesthesia,' he said. The nurse released him and reached for his IV tower, and gently fitted a plastic mask over Quatre's mouth and nose. 'Once you're fully asleep we'll be putting in the respirator tube,' she told him. 'You'll be out for about three hours. All set?'
He nodded.
'Count backward from ten,' she instructed.
He drew a breath, and obeyed. 'Ten,' he began, and was interrupted again by a commotion at the door. There was a loud, angry exchange, and then the door burst open, revealing an orderly grasping futilely for a smaller man slipping easily through the crowd of surgeons. Quatre, shocked, began to laugh.
It was Duo. The braid hanging out the back of a green cap was unmistakable.
In a moment the nurse had whisked the mask away, her voice chiming in with the protests about Duo's sudden appearance. Quatre quieted them all with a firm, 'It's all right. This is a friend.'
Only Doctor Pitik's eyes were visible, but they were frowning heavily. 'I was told no-one would be sitting with you.'
'That was before I knew he was going into surgery,' Duo retorted, taking station at the bed. He gripped Quatre's hand, grinning. 'I'm not going anywhere,' he added softly.
He hadn't known just how nervous he was until relief flooded him. He returned Duo's smile gratefully. 'It's all right,' he told Pitik. 'Is it all right for him to stay?'
It was the nurse who answered, by gently moving Duo to stand behind Quatre's head. The man with the sheet finished arranging it, effectively blocking Quatre's view of anything south of his neck. Quatre turned his eyes up to Duo, who was bending over him, and said, 'You got here fast.'
'I pulled a few strings with the Preventers. Private jet.' His fingers wound through Quatre's hair, a soothing, intimate gesture. 'You're not the only one with friends in high places, you know.'
The nurse had the mask in hand again. She cleared her throat, holding it up suggestively. Quatre nodded, and she set it over his mouth and nose again. 'Ten,' she prompted.
'I'll be here the whole time,' Duo whispered against his forehead. A moment later his lips pressed there in a dry, welcome kiss of assurance.
'Ten,' Quatre repeated. He drew a deep breath, tasting something bitter in the oxygen flow from the mask. 'Nine. Eight.' A deeper breath, encouraging the medicine to flow deep into his lungs. The taste was stronger, but he still felt alert. 'Seven.'
He heard the surgeons moving, felt bodies clustering around him. Someone draped a new, warmer blanket over his legs, set something heavy, a tray, on his knees.
'Six. Five.'
Duo didn't break their gaze, but his question was directed to the nurse. 'How fast does this usually work?'
'He's well within parameters,' she answered.
'Four,' Quatre said. Worry hit him. He didn't feel at all woozy. 'Three.'
Duo stroked his hair, passing lightly over his temples. Quatre heard them fire up the saw, and wished he hadn't.
'Two,' he said, and drew one last deep breath. '... one.'
His eyelids felt heavy. He fought it instinctively, until he realised it was the anesthesia, finally making an appearance. He let his eyes slide shut of their own accord, and sighed into the mask. 'Zero,' he added muzzily, as a joke, and wondered if he'd have to go into the negatives.
Horrible pain woke him. His chest was a gaping pit of fiery agony. Every other part of him was cold, numb. He thought he was screaming, but the muscles of his throat were locked and immobile. All of him was. Vague noise swam around him, and the mechanical breathiness of the respirator forcing oxygen down his windpipe. He tried to open his eyes, but the darkness was unbelievable, swallowing him deeper and deeper into the pain. He floated in it, exerting tortured effort into showing he was alive, growing more and more desperate. If only he could scream!
From a thousand light years away he felt fingers brush over his face, bringing only a second of relief. He wanted to sob. Duo, his tattered mind told him frantically. Tell Duo! Duo would make the hurt stop, someone had to make the hurting stop!
'He's sweating,' said a voice, far far away, and the fingers moved in his hair. Every touch was a mocking mirror of the punishing throbs of his chest.
'Doctor, look at the monitor.'
'He's coming out from under,' a woman's voice overrode. 'Anesthesia! Now!'
A flood of coolness spread through his arm and plunged into the abyss of his chest. Something warm and wet slipped from his eyes. The darkness swallowed him under, and this time he couldn't fight his way to the surface.
It was almost marvelous to let himself drown.
End Part 8
(:./erin/launch8)
